Variable monetary penalties (VMPs) were introduced in 2010 to enable the Environment Agency to directly levy fines for serious environmental offences without having to go through expensive and lengthy court proceedings, but to date the agency has not levied a single VMP against water companies.
Despite this, the environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, last week announced a 1,000-fold rise in the cap on VMPs, from £250,000 to £250m, and said the bigger financial penalties “will act as a greater deterrent and push water companies to do more, and faster, when it comes to investing in infrastructure and improving the quality of our water” and that “the polluter must pay”. The government’s pledge to raise the cap on the amount of money the Environment Agency can fine water companies for sewage pollution to £250m has been described as “hot air”.
“Punishments are only relevant if you have a regulator who is willing to impose them,” an Environment Agency insider said.
After frequent deep budget cuts, the agency’s chief executive, Sir James Bevan, has said the regulator is no longer sufficiently funded and that it would have to pause or stop some of its environmental protection activities. The regulator has told its staff to “shut down” and ignore reports of low-impact pollution events, saying it does not have enough money to investigate them.
The Environment Agency has also slashed its water-quality monitoring regime, and has downgraded 93% of prosecutions for serious pollution over four years, despite recommendations from frontline staff for the perpetrators to face the highest sanction, and agency staff say that cuts and operational decisions have made it “toothless”.
Ash Smith, the founder of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, said: “Presumably, someone at Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] was tasked with coming up with something that sounded powerful and cost nothing. Raising the level of monetary penalties that are not even used would have been the perfect soundbite..." Smith continued, The reality is that deliberately weak regulation and flawed privatisation has created a polluting for-profit-fest which has attracted ownership from all over the globe to extract money for nothing and take it offshore tax-free. We can expect more desperate threats and promises like raising penalties that won’t really be used, as the government tries carefully not to scare the shareholders or show what a massive scam has been perpetrated on the public.”
‘Hot air’: plans to crack down on UK water polluters dismissed as toothless | Water | The Guardian
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